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Category Archives: Girls’ Room

First and foremost, if you’re feeling generous today, we’d loooove to have your vote for Ryan’s nursery over at Apartment Therapy’s Room for Color Contest.

A few weekends back, we kicked off the beginning stages of planking the ceiling in the girls’ room. As I’ve mentioned before, when we purchased our home, all of the bedrooms came equipped with popcorn ceilings (yay), and we’re slowly updating them to fit our tastes. Typically, popcorn ceilings can be scraped off with a little elbow grease, but if they’ve been painted, like ours had, then you’ll have to get a little creative.

I made a few quick stops into our local hardware stores, checking out the options, before settling on packs of 8′ pine planks. A few things that sealed the deal for us:

• The bedroom is approximately 11’6 x 12’6, so the 8′ length planks meant that we’d have seams. It wasn’t a deal breaker to work with the seams, but it would’ve taken half as long with longer 12′ planks. Unfortunately, all of the 12′ options were ridiculously thick and heavy, and ceilings are probably not the best place for that.

• Again, the weight. These planks were so lightweight that Ricky could easily install them by himself, which with three little people running around, is pretty much our only option right now.

• Cost. All the other options were a good $75-$100 more to plank the entire ceiling. These come in packs of six, at about $11 each. A no brainer. For anyone looking to do a ceiling of their own, we ended up using 12 packs, which ran us around $140 total, with tax.

Now, to learn from our mistakes – Paint before installing. We knew this, and tried to avoid it like hell, with no luck. We were in a bit of a time crunch that didn’t allow us the prior paint step, but you my friends, should paint first, because what a good time my neck is having painting several ceiling coats and filling six million holes with wood putty.

Moving on.

The install itself is relatively easy, just mark your ceiling joists and a few nails gets the job done. The planks are tongue and groove and interlock, but one thing to note, this isn’t the highest quality wood. Like, at all. So, when I say interlock, expect a little effort on your part in some spots. Also expect to take half the packs back to the store to exchange them for non-chipping, not completely falling apart pieces. Don’t get me wrong, it can be good stuff, it’s just more of a garage sale experience – you’ll have to do a little digging first.

I wanted to include this close up to show our edges. No, we are not this terrible at measuring (although sometimes it happens, ha). This was more a result of eliminating huge knots in the wood, and doing our best to prevent waste material. My point is, if you’re planning to install crown molding, as we did, you have some room to play with, which is nice.

(half installed crown)

We’re still in the process of painting now, but I’m amazed at this transformation already. The room is so much lighter without the pink ceiling, and I’d be lying if I said I minded the natural wood. It feels really warm and cozy. Reminds me a lot of my parents home (a log cabin). Granted that wood ceiling is already painted white (haha), but it’s a nice reminder to try something out of the typical “paint everything white” box that we all seem to be stuck in these days.

When we moved into our current home, we set up a temporary basket in Zoey’s room for storing books. Two years later, we now have an overflowing basket and two very frustrated little girls, trying to squeeze books in and out of it.

Their room has an awkward little corner, directly behind the door, where we’d previously hung a few hooks for coats and bags. It worked, but it definitely wasn’t making the most of the space. We could do better. I pinned this clever corner bookcase, two years ago, and I’m happy to say that we’ve finally built something similar!

We took some cues from our inspiration, and then put a few twists of our own on it, like the rounded dowel rods vs square, and doubling them up on each shelf. I wanted to make sure it could accommodate smaller books too, since the girls still have a few of those hanging around. Plus, the books will just get smaller again as they grow older. So, the idea is for this to work for many years to come.

Ricky built the entire piece in the garage, and them installed it, fully assembled, which was really gratifying to watch. Blank corner to instant, awesome bookcase corner (why can’t all project be like that?).

After a lot of wood putty, I painted it to match the future trim (ha), Sherwin Williams’ Snowbound, in semi-gloss. Harmony ftw – pretty much my go-to paint for anything inside that can’t be aired out. And if you haven’t already noticed from the taped up rosin paper, I chose to bring out the spray gun on this project, because, you know, tight corners, limited time, (must save all patience for children) type things. We’re fans of the Wagner Flexio 590 (link contains affiliate), in case anyone is interested.

Loading it up with books was definitely my idea of a good time. Very Christmas morning-esque. It’s also been really fun to rediscover many of the forgotten books from the bottom of the pile.

AND, amazing extra bonus – for some reason, the girls are now excellent about putting away their books when they’re finished. We’ll see how long this lasts, but I’m really hoping it’s the new norm!

Last November we celebrated Zoey’s third birthday, and naturally, as we now come up on her fourth birthday, I’m finally blogging about. For most holidays we’re pretty low-key on gifts for the kids, nothing overly complicated, but birthdays we try to step it up a notch. (Really, this means I come up with ideas and Ricky kindly builds them, like a play kitchen, train table, play tent, etc.)

With Zoey’s ever-growing collection of dress-up clothes, it couldn’t have been more evident what to make her. Some of you may remember the Ikea Ombre Chest?

Well, the exterior was still in great shape, but we thought the interior could use a fun new makeover. Here she is now!

Ricky removed the interior drawer glides, whipped up a simple cubbie area for baskets, and installed a tiny clothing rod for dresses galore. Wood putty, prime, paint, and we have a whole new look!

As for the door itself, we wanted to the exterior to appear the same, so Ricky separated the drawer fronts and reattached them to one another using a few 1×3’s. Easy peasy. The entire door hangs on a trio of new hinges.

The baskets hold all of the accessories – tiaras, magical wands, jewelry, etc. You know, the necessary princess attire.

While a few packs of small hangers clip up the dresses.

Honestly, I don’t even know how our dress-up collection got to this point. I swear just yesterday I was pregnant with Zoey, and now we have backpacks and sports gear and questions about everything, and it’s all just moving entirely too fast. Anyway. Start to finish.

A year later and the girls are still getting so much use out of this project. Because princess dresses count as normal, everyday clothes, right?

When I first began playing around with a new design for the girls room, I wanted them to be as involved as possible. So, I asked them what they wanted. Let me lead this by saying that there are maybe five total items that I was planning to have stay in the room, one of them being Zoey’s headboard. I’d just need to duplicate it for Lizzy. Well, as I mentioned in the initial plans, their first idea was to change that.

This was my first time using nailhead trim, so this trim kit ( in french natural) made it a lot less intimidating. Totally doable for any beginner.

You also may notice that we painted the once gray walls. The new color is Sherwin Wiliam’s Lighter Mint, which reads as a completely different color than the first time we used on Ryan’s ceiling. Instead of the warm and muted mint that we had in the nursery, here we have a light and fresh mint.

It’s subtle and yet, so much fun against the hot pink. Actually, it almost looks white in these photos, which is 100% the result of my lacking photography skills.

I mentioned in our plans that I’d scored a campaign dresser on Craigslist last summer. Well, here she is, all dolled up in a fresh coat of white paint and clean hardware.

I can’t get enough of the campaign hardware and the nailhead trim playing off each other.

So, clearly there’s a lot to still do here. Address the blank walls, the ceiling, lighting, and let’s not forget that I neglected to even show you the other half of the room.. there’s a reason for that 😉

I’m long overdue on sharing updates in the girls’ room, so I thought I’d start by catching up with our initial plans for the space. I decided to finally get my butt in gear after finishing Ryan’s Nursery. I mean, it’s totally unfair for a newborn to have a 100% finished room of his own, while his 2 + 3 year old sisters have bare walls. Which they’ve made very evident, pinning up their artwork on said blank walls saying, “Look, Mommy! We have pictures too!”. Those girls know how to seriously break a Momma’s heart.

Prior to Lizzy moving in with Zoey, we had already made a few updates to the room, but some of them haven’t been working out so well. For instance, their yellow Ikea chest. As a birthday gift for Zoey last year, we actually gave this guy a completely new look on the inside, removing all the drawers, and installing a few small shelves and a clothing rod. We kept the exterior the same, so it still appears to be a chest of drawers. I’ll have to share the entire thing on the blog someday. It’s absolute princess dress-up heaven. Point of story – The chest now has a swing door, not drawers, and it doesn’t function as well between the two beds. We’re still shooting to keep it in the room, somewhere, just not as a bedside table.

You also may remember the gallery wall, which has been removed for quite some time now. What used to be a play kitchen beneath it, now lives a second bed, with curious toddler hands. This was pretty much taken down the night that Lizzy moved in. She’s been in the new bed for about six months now, and I don’t think art on the walls during bedtime would be totally distracting at this point, but it definitely can’t be anything fragile. I’m looking at you string heart and animal heads. Plus, most everything in that gallery wall was thrown together in an attempt to just have something, anything on the walls. This time, I’m hoping to make things more personal, and really incorporate the girls’ interests. It’s their room after all, so no holding back.

Alright, alright. Onto the mood board!

First up, color scheme. We’re switching a few things up, with new hot pinks and mints (nixing the red and orange), but keeping the yellows and pastel pinks from the previous direction we were headed in. Not a huge deal, doesn’t effect much, but it feels so fresh now! Plus, I’m a sucker for mixing in a cool color (mint) with warmer tones (pinks and yellows).

I’d envisioned white walls for the longest time, but on a whim I threw this minty color in as the background on Photoshop, and I was sold. The ceiling is getting an entire new look as well, if you’re remembering the coral paint. Covering the popcorn ceilings has been a long-term goal for all of the bedrooms, so we’re hoping to do a white wood plank ceiling of sorts. If not, maybe just drywall again? Also, yes, I realize that mint walls and a plank ceiling combination is the exact opposite or Ryan’s Nursery, ha!

1 • Ok, here’s the deal with the old headboard. Zoey and Lizzy mutually agreed (that’s a damn miracle in case you didn’t know) that they wanted their beds to be pink. I had already made Zoey a headboard, and to be quite honest, I wasn’t necessarily all that excited about making a second one of those. Easy, yes, if I hadn’t misplaced the curvy-shaped template to duplicate. I know, I could figure it out, but “PINK, MOM”. The thing is, I want the girls to be in love with this room. I want them to be proud of it. So, if they want pink headboards, what the heck. Let’s do this.

I sold the old one on Craigslist (for a profit, actually) so no harm. The new headboards are complete, they just need to be properly hung, and then I’ll share the hot pink and brass nailhead details in all their glory!

2 • An old house and unpredictable Cincy weather call for ceiling fans in the bedrooms. I’m loving the sleek design of this one, but haven’t quite pulled the trigger on anything. Hoping to find an affordable option, white, aesthetically pleasing (duh), and the real kicker – a flush-mount. It’s a rough search. The ceiling fan design world needs help.

3 • I haven’t done a large piece of art in our new house since this epic fail, so I’m declaring this makeover the time for it. I’d LOVE to get something huge over the girls’ beds, and I just keep coming back to this freaking awesome diy dinosaur engineer print. We visited the new dinosaur exhibit at King’s Island this summer and holy dinosaur obsession. The girls can’t get enough. They’d go nuts if I let them pick out their very own dinosaur to go over their beds. Or maybe some other animal? I don’t know, it really doesn’t get a whole lot cooler.

4 • I grabbed one of these industrial task lamps in yellow during a lighting sale a few months ago. It’s perfect for bedtime stories and the girls are just a little too excited that they can turn it on and off by themselves (it has a switch on the cord).

5 • I’m not going theme crazy in this room, I mostly just want to focus on whatever it is that currently has the girls fascinated. Right now, that means dinosaurs, outer space, monsters, and unicorns! These years are so much fun and I just want to embrace it. They’d loose it for this moon globe. I can see the endless late night talks with Daddy already.

6 • Last summer (yes, you heard me) I found an entire set of Campaign furniture on Craigslist. Chest, nightstands, bookcase, and desk.. For $200 dollars. People, you are killing me. Obviously, I bought it, and obviously, it’s been sitting in our garage since then. Ha. Next post, promise, I’ll share what we’ve done with the chest, along with the headboards. (chest source)

7 • I haven’t quite decided if this pointy unicorn is practical for preschoolers yet or not, but it’s a definite want. The girls would flip, and maybe I could hang it high enough out of reach (aka, eye-stabbage-level). I mean, gold glitter dipped horns. Come on.

8 • Last week Zoey and Lizzy learned how to use the tape dispenser themselves, and all of walls are open game for their art. It’s adorable. Really. Except for the paint that peels off the walls when the tape comes down. Not cool. I would love to give them a big space in their room to display crafts to their hearts content. Preferably, without the use of tape. I’m crazy for these cloud-shaped magnet boards. A big grouping of them would be so adorable. A handful of dinosaur magnets to really set things over the top on the cuteness scale. Clouds and dinosaurs tho? Maybe airplanes. Oh, screw it.

9 • They can’t read just yet, but when they can, hopefully they can appreciate this banner and the weirdness that we’ve instilled in them. Stay Weird little babies.

10 • I have no idea what to do with these tiny alphabet cards, but I so desperately want them displayed. Shadow box maybe? String banner? Ideas, anyone?

13 • Last, but oh so certainly not least. We have big plans for a bookcase in the corner behind their bedroom door, like this one (scroll down after click). We’ve made some serious progress here, so I’m shooting to share an update here as well. Plus, Santa brought a pair of these fur bean bags last year, for the coziest little reading spot! Way to think ahead big man.

ELSEWHERE

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Cape 27 may contain some contextual affiliate links, in which I receive a small commission should a purchase be made through said link. I do not recommend products that I have not or would not purchase with my own money.